Gentrification of New York
Gentrification is a general term for the arrival of wealthier people in an existing urban district, a related increase in rents and property values, and changes in the district's character and culture. The term is often used negatively, suggesting the displacement of poor communities by rich outsiders. But the effects of gentrification are complex and contradictory, and its real impact varies. Gentrification causes the average income to increase and the average family size to decrease in the community. (Patch, 2004)The poorer native residents of the neighborhood are left unable to pay increased rents, house prices, and property taxes. As a result, they are gradually being moved.
The first phase of gentrification begins when wealthy individuals or investment companies buy old rundown buildings and factories and convert them into residences and shops. “Gentrification changes the culturally diverse community to a more economically homogenous community” (Patch, 2004). It plays a major part in making New York City the beautiful city that it is today. Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are examples of gentrification that is happening today. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Fort Greene fought hard times that came with city wide poverty, crime and drugs. There were some abandoned houses that artists, preservationists and black professionals began to claim that restored the neighborhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Clinton Hill provides a rare perspective on the gentrification process, one that is largely stripped of racial tension because of the neighborhood's history of integration and the participation of middle-income blacks in the process. (Hinds, 1987)
Some areas of Brooklyn that have been poverty and crime ridden area are now being restored back to the respectable community that it once was. Fort Greene contains many superb examples of mid-19th century Italianate and Eastlake architecture, most of which is well preserved. It is known for its many graceful, tree-lined streets and elegant low-rise housing. Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have become significantly whiter as black people have left the neighborhoods by the thousands in the last 10 years, census data shows. (Brown, 2010) The Rev. Samuel Austin said that some of his parishioners at Brown Memorial Baptist Church struggle to pay their rent double up in apartments or have moved out of the area entirely. ''There aren't too many blacks or disinherited poor who can deal with $700 a month for one bedroom,'' he said.
Urban gentrification occasionally changes the culturally mixed nature of a community to a more economically standardized community that some describe as having a suburban character (Brydson, 2008). Two distinct, sociologic theories explain and justify gentrification as an economic process and as a social process. The economic process is called as the production-side theory in which it describes the capital investments that lead to a production of better urban space while social development or else known as consumption-side theory give details on how the improvement of space could lead to a demand of a better life for people. These actions are inclined to reduce local property crime, increase property values and prices, and increase tax revenues.
An example of this process is the gentrification's economic eviction of hippies from the Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, in the 1960s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Manhattan lofts in SoHo were converted en masse into housing for artists and hippies, and then their sub-culture followers. Gentrification also occurred throughout the 1990s and 2000s in the East Village and the Lower East Side of New York City; they began pushing out theatres and performance-art spaces.
SoHo, which is located in lower Manhattan, showed the same signs of social and economic change in the city. “The name SoHo came from inhabitants seeking to identify their group geographically, they consulted a city planning commission map that described the area as South of Houston, which was shortened to SoHo” (Patch, 2004). In the early 19th century, SoHo was an area of mostly farms, rolling hills, streams, and even a swamp at its southern end, with Federal- and Greek-Revival-style housing. By mid-19th century, they were replaced by more-solid structures of masonry and cast iron. It was a lively theater and shopping district, and even home to many brothels. As the center of the city moved uptown, the quality of the area declined, and became known as Hell's Hundred Acres because of the many fires in the area, an "industrial wasteland", full of sweatshops and small factories in the daytime, empty at night. In the mid-20th century when artists began to move in because of the appealing large spaces where they could both live and work. SoHo boasts the greatest collection of cast-iron architecture in the world. Cast iron was initially used as a decorative front over a pre-existing building. (Siegfried, 1978) Approximately 250 cast iron buildings stand in New York City and the majority of them are in SoHo.
Harlem has also undergone gentrification. I was fortunate enough to go to Harlem as part of one of our many expeditions for my Core 390 class. Gentrification affects neighborhoods in cities all over the world and is difficult to fight because it is so decentralized. When it is concentrated, as it is in Harlem, there's more chance of beating back a real estate market that deprives people of decent homes. Harlem, by the end of the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century has faced growing slums and areas that were shunned in older portions. The decline included neglect and abandonment of public and private buildings and growth of poverty of the remaining residents, often recent immigrants, minorities, and the elderly (Singh, 2007). Gentrification is only stopped in one of two ways. Either the economy goes into recession or people organize to fight for decent housing. The developers, landlords, banks, and City Hall are the chief culprits. The area of Harlem and its renewal, the term gentrification is new; but the original idea is old. Throughout history, cities have grown, become stagnant, and then died.
Works Cited
Brown, Stephen. "Census Lays Bare Rapid Gentrification." (2010).
Brydson, Nicole. "Brooklyn, The Borough: A Case of Gentrification." 2008.
Hinds, Michael deCourcy. Gentrification: The Case of Clinton Hill. 1987.
<http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/realestate/gentrification-the-case-of-clinton-hill.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm>.
<http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/realestate/gentrification-the-case-of-clinton-hill.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm>.
Patch, Jason. "The Embedded Landscape of Gentrification." Visual Studies, 2004. 169-186.
Siegfried, Helene Zucker Seeman & Alanna. "History of SoHo." Neal-Schuman Publishers, 1978.
Singh, Samuel. Gentrification in Harlem. 2007. <http://www.socyberty.com/issues/gentrification-in-harlem/>.
